As part of the Faculty’s goal to enable its students gain a head-start in their careers, the department of Public Relations and Advertising hosted Harper Ozbirim, the Director of the Marketing department of Blue Way group at 3:00 pm on the 15th of May, 2018. He spoke to the students about creating a success story out of their careers. In an introduction by the department’s chair Assoc. Prof. Dr. Anil Kemal Kaya, she mentioned that Harper Ozbirim is a Business graduate for Bilkent University who also holds a master’s degree in International Marketing from Kings College London.
The event which was held at the Faculty’s Purple hall had students and staff in attendance eager to know how they could find fulfillment out of their careers. Speaking to the attendees, he defined Marketing as Storytelling and explained how through marketing he was able to with his company market houses and build a brand in Alsancak, Milo’s Park Homes. He said, “To market our project, we invested in virtual reality, nature friendly products since the project was a nature friendly one, we constructed a catalogue with high 3dimension resolution images, we created a website applicable for all devices and clients could see different houses , we made a 2 minute animation video which gave more details about the project and we invested in Virtual reality which gave the potential customers the opportunity to see projects more lively”.
Using Social Media for marketing is also a strategy that was implemented by Milos Park Homes especially the use of Facebook, he said “We try to create a connection with our customers using catchy words and real images and they all caused a traffic on Facebook getting us attention in the end, the reason we use Facebook primarily is because it is the popular media used by our target market”. He added saying “Create a buzz about your brand, market it and then sell it, It is very important to have a media coverage because it shows the success of the project”.
The Milos’ brand centers its advertising campaigns on popular agenda for a much more effective publicity. For instance, the company was able to base their product commercial on a Star Wars theme since their potential clients were interested in Star Wars and according to Harper, “It got a lot of attention on Social Media”.
In conclusion of the event, Harper answered the pressing questions of the students and staff. It was a really insightful event, Harper encouraged the students to invest in a lot of promotion using social media as an effective tool to build a reliable brand.
By Jemimah Atii
